Chess Cake

This is one of the cakes I did for my fathers birthday, a few weeks ago I found chess icecube forms on the internet and I was sure it would be a perfect match for his cake this year. But sadly it wasn't as easy to realize as I thought, but at least I tried. For the chess pieces I had to mold tons of chocolate and used the icecube forms I mentioned above. To the dark chocolate I added walnuts and to the white one pistachios. For the board I also molded some chocolate filled it in a special form and then cut out the single pieces. But it really wasn't easy to do that. It took me about an hour to realize how to cut the chocolate board without it breaking into a million pieces. The bigger problem was the size of the cake. I had to bake two cakes and since I had no plate this big I put them together on a baking sheet. By the way it's an orange cake with a whipped cream topping. I was a little uncertain about mixing orange and whipped cream but it turned out fine. I think my father really appreciated my intention, at least he shared a picture of it at his facebook page ;) (By the way the whole thing was also REALLY heavy.)

Tank Cake

My sister-in-law told me that my cute nephew lately has an obsession with tanks, so I promised her I would try to make a tank cake for his birthday. He had birthday last saturday (one day before my father's birthday) and I made three cakes for the party, this one was the only one I did without having a crisis late at night. It's a hazelnut-chocolate batter filled with hazelnut cream. On the top is a simple icing, sadly I found no way to dye the icing in a camouflage colour :( Yellow is the favourite colour of my nephew, hence I wrote his name and a four with yellow icing and used a little water to stick it to the brown icing. I think with a little more time (this week I have exams so I didn't have much time last week), I would've come up with something better. But he was excited anyway (: Here's a snapshot of him right before he blew out his candles:

Exotic Fruits Cake

This one is an exotic fruits cake in the form of a bear (I do love this form especially for children birthday parties, it's made out of silicon, so it doesn't need much space and the cake always looks perfect and it's also easy to clean and lasts like forever). I made it when my sister gave birth to my niece in July 2007. It's a really simple cake and perfect for the hot season. The topping is a mixture of cream cheese and sugar. I wrote 'Anja' on it with peaches, that's the name my sister and her husband chose (: